The bureaucracy backs down

It was on their fourth album, "I Think We're Also Bozos on This Bus," that the Firesign Theatre formulated Fudd's First Law of Opposition: "If you push something hard enough, it will fall over."

Observers of meddling federal bureaucracies have started to notice a related tendency.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission seemed irresistible in its insistence that no job category be reserved for members of a single gender; it appeared to be only a matter of time before there'd be federal quotas for male Playboy centerfolds (March and September?) and a fixed percentage of women being slammed into the boards in the NHL.

But then the EEOC took on Hooters, and -- lo and behold -- Hooters fought back.

In Washington and New York, full-page newspaper ads showed a mustachioed stud decked out in skimpy shorts and T-shirt -- and enormous falsies -- announcing that, thanks to EEOC intervention, this was what your server was now going to look like at the restaurant chain known for its shapely waitresses: Introducing "The Hooters Boys"!

There's nothing a nit-picking nanny-stater hates more than being laughed at. The EEOC quickly backed down.

This spring, it was the turn of Vaune Dillmann, micro-brewer in the tiny Northern California town of Weed, to face the ire of a regulatory agency with too much time on its hands.

The dispute started last winter after Mr. Dillmann sent the Mt. Shasta Brewing Co.'s proposed label for its latest beer, Lemurian Lager, to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

He included the same bottle cap he'd been using on his other five brews -- a cap that makes a pun on the name of the small town for which his brewery has been a shot in the arm: "Try Legal Weed."

This time, though, the U.S. Treasury branch rejected the phrasing, citing federal laws that supposedly prohibit drug references on alcoholic beverages.

(Because alcohol is unquestionably a drug, about the only way to avoid a "drug reference" on a beer bottle is to pretend it's sarsaparilla.)

Since the dispute was first publicized in April, Mr. Dillmann said he has received letters, phone calls and messages from more than 1,200 people around the world -- including old friends and his high school football coach in his hometown of Milwaukee.

"We have not had one even remotely negative comment," he said.

Mr. Dillmann founded his brewery in 2004 and named the company's first official brew for the town's founder, Abner Weed, a timber baron who eventually was elected to the state Senate.

Mr. Dillmann appealed and was preparing for a legal fight when he received a registered letter this week saying he can continue using the bottle caps.

"Based on the context of the entire label, we agree that the phrase in question refers to the brand name of the product and does not mislead consumers," said the letter, dated July 31.

In other words, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau will back down and slink away, picking a fight with someone less likely to rear up and fight back.

Congratulations, Mr. Dillmann. Yours is a heart-warming victory over the forces of pettifogging repression.

In fact, we're all toked up about it.